The late-June Bush-Musharraf Camp David show seems to have been widely accepted as a great success, at least in the corporate media's projection of things. That being said, if a nationwide poll were conducted in Pakistan, it is likely that most Pakistanis would judge the meeting as eyewash, because history has taught us that ordinary Pakistanis are always the losers in such games. Nevertheless, the public relations exercise was executed more or less effectively – General Musharraf has received the green light from those who matter to carry on with his unique form of "sustainable democracy" in Pakistan.
One interesting issue stood out in the Camp David discussions. George W Bush minced no words when he said that Musharraf had pushed hard for the delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, originally sold in 1988-89. Musharraf seems to link the delivery of the fighter jets to ensuring Pakistan's "sovereign equality" vis-à-vis India – getting the jets would be no less than US acknowledgement that Pakistan's stance on India is legitimate and acceptable. It is therefore quite symbolic that Bush unambiguously asserted that the USD three billion package offered to Pakistan does not include the F-16s.
Despite the best efforts of the US State Department over the past two years to convince us that there is no more valuable partner in the 'war on terror' than Pakistan, the simple reality is that keeping India happy is a far greater priority for the US than pleasing Pakistan. The latter is important insofar as it remains stable and cooperative, but the big fish in the Subcontinent is, and always has been, someone else. It is now only a matter of historical interest that during the cold war India maintained a principled stance of non-alignment, and that between Moscow and Washington, India was closer to the former. Now that bipolarity in international affairs is a thing of the past, India has moved a lot closer to the US, and will likely to continue to do so.
This leaves the Pakistani establishment in a fix. For many years, the US Central Intelligence Agency funded non-state actors based in Pakistan to wage a 'holy' war against the Russians in Afghanistan. But now, with the monster on the loose and Pakistan's military establishment having built its own empire from the embers of the 1980s Afghan war, the US takes a different view of things and wants the religious right curbed. At least, that is what one is made to believe. In reality, it probably suits the US just fine that the mullahs in Pakistan are responsible for the occasional tumult, just as the US is fairly comfortable with mullahs in most Muslim-majority countries around the world. This is because it is important for the US establishment to maintain the threat perception of extremist Islam so as to continue its imperial march.